Application of Benford’s law in agricultural production statistics

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Hancı F.

JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION OF SRI LANKA, cilt.50, sa.2, ss.387-393, 2022 (SCI-Expanded)

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 50 Sayı: 2
  • Basım Tarihi: 2022
  • Dergi Adı: JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION OF SRI LANKA
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus, Aquatic Science & Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA), BIOSIS, Pollution Abstracts
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.387-393
  • Erciyes Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

The importance of food supply throughout the world has once again shown its significance in the COVID-19 pandemic period. A continuous food supply is possible with correct agricultural programming. An effective agricultural product programming can only be possible by obtaining precise agricultural data. However, it is very difficult to gather accurate agricultural production statistics from all over the world and confirm their accuracy. In this study, the compatibility of the production statistics of six important agricultural products (wheat, rice, potato, onion, banana, apple) which had been collected from local sources, and had published as open- source by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, with Benford’s law was examined for the first time. Data for the last two decades are used to ignore the impact of annual fluctuations. The compatibility of theoretically expected and observed data was tested by Chi-square (z2) and Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) tests. Although inconsistencies were found in some data by examining the numbers in the first, second, and first two digits, in general, the MAD test results gave a mostly concordant result.